Harry Cooper2015-03-03T15:21:26-05:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=harry-cooperCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Harry CooperGood old fashioned elbow grease.The Questions Clegg Should Not Ask Farage Tonighttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.50330572014-03-26T04:55:35-04:002014-05-25T05:59:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
Unfortunately most pundits, politicians and journalists fail to take note of this situation and instead spend their time trying to counter Farage (and his fiefdom, Ukip) by criticising him on policy and practice. This strategy is doomed to fail because it fails to acknowledge why he is so well-liked.

The best thing to come out of the debate tonight for Clegg would be to not sound like the wet fish he normally does. And if he asks the questions that Hasan has suggested, he may as well just give up now.

I thought I'd respond to each of the questions Hasan poses to indicate why they are the wrong ones to ask. To save some space, I condensed the questions, so apologies for any misrepresentation of what was originally asked.

1) Why should we believe what Ukip says, and not the Institute of Directors, a body representing the captains of industry?

Because, like most industry trade associations, they speak for a very narrow, unrepresentative demographic of the population. Those who like Ukip tend to hate 'business' and 'the rich', which the IoD is associated with. The 'threat to the UK economy' argument is a valid but tired one that bores most voters to death.

2) Isn't it true that the number of European migrants in the UK is almost exactly balanced by the number of Britons living elsewhere in the EU?

Well yes, that is a fact. But again, Ukip fans probably couldn't care less. They tend to be working class and not likely to have the option of living abroad.

3) What would happen to the 2.2million Britons who live in the EU if we pull out? Forcible repatriation to the UK?

I don't think even Ukip are arguing for forced repatriation, even if they do spout a lot of crap. The question is an absurd one to ask and would make Cleggers sound childish and amateur.

4) The EU costs us 37p per person a day. Do you really think that's unaffordable? A little over half the cost of a Mars bar?

For many people, that 37p is 37p too much and for many people probably does make a difference. Cleggers would sound out of touch and arrogant. Also, the calculation is slightly puerile, based on net contribution divided by the number of days in a year and the population of the UK. It is impossible to say what it costs us because of the number of variables and contributing factors. Best avoid this minefield.

5) How much money have you personally claimed in expenses from the European Parliament, in addition to your salary?

Farage and his gang have never made any secret of the fact that they take funds from the European Parliament. In fact, they actively boast about it. Ukip fans generally seem to find it quite funny that European Parliament funds are spent to bring about the demise of the European Parliament.

6) If you're so worried about the EU 'gravy train' and 'value for money' in Brussels, why did a member of your party's NEC ask Ukip MEPs to divert £10,000 each from their European parliamentary allowances and salaries to Ukip headquarters?

See above.

7) Is it true that EU authorities have been asked to investigate whether Ukip staff in the UK are being paid with EU money, in breach of EU regulations? That's pretty embarrassing, isn't it?

See above. (Also, 'pretty embarrassing, isn't it?' is an attempt to be witty, which Clegg can't do but Farage can, so best not to try it.)

8) How embarrassed were you personally when former Ukip MEP Tom Wise was jailed in 2009 for expenses fraud?

This is a gift to Farage and one he can respond to with the simple sentence "Very embarrassed which is why they are no longer in Ukip". Once again, Ukip fans generally don't seem that fussed about the integrity of UKIP since they see that most of the political establishment is corrupt.

9) What empirical evidence do you have that benefit tourism is a problem?

Cardinal sin number one. Do not argue with Ukip on the basis of fact or 'empirical evidence'. No one cares if there is or isn't actually a problem. The whole immigration debate is about perception, not reality. Farage isn't popular because of his loyalty to the truth. He is popular because he quite happily says 'fuck off' to politicians like Clegg. Getting bogged down in facts and figures is precisely what he will want to happen.

10) Isn't it the case that migrants from the new EU countries have paid 30% more in taxes to the UK exchequer than they've taken out in benefits or public services?

Yes. But again, Ukip supporters don't care about this sort of thing. They care about the perceived invasion of their suburbs by Gypsies.

11) Which taxes would you have raised to replace the £5billion that migrants from eastern Europe are estimated to have contributed to our economy between 2004 and 2011?

See above. Also Farage isn't trying to list policy initiatives like this question would suggest. He is a populist so can say whatever he likes. He'd probably just say he'd pay for out of money saved by leaving the EU.

12) Why do you think it is that Ukip doesn't have any female MEPs?

Only a narrow demographic of flustered Guardian reading feminists really care about this. Ukip supporters almost certainly do not.

13) Could it be because, as former Ukip MEP Marta Andreasen once put it, you're an "anti-women.. dictator" whose view is that "women should be in the kitchen or in the bedroom"?

He will simply say 'she's angry so don't listen to her'.

14) Doesn't the political group you sit in the European Parliament include representatives of the Danish People's Party, the True Finns Party and Italy's Lega Nord - all of them pretty far-right parties?

Most political groups in the European Parliament have some shady characters in their ranks, even the group to which the Labour party belongs to. And again, Ukip supporters don't care.

15) You're fellow co-chair of the EFD, the Lega Nord's Francesco Speroni, has described far-right terrorist and mass murderer Anders Breivik as someone whose "ideas are in defence of western civilisation" - why don't you take this opportunity tonight to distance yourself from him and his horrific remarks?

Well of course he doesn't agree with what Speroni said! Farage may be some things but I think it's fair to say he isn't a Breivik sympathiser. Ukip supporters probably wouldn't care either way anyway.

16) Do you support your colleague Gerard Batten's demand that British Muslims sign up to a special code of conduct?

Farage has already said he doesn't agree with this initiative. The issue is, as far as he is concerned, dead and buried. And again, Ukip supporters probably quite like the idea anyway.

17) And do you share Batten's support for a ban on any new mosques across the whole of Europe?

See above.

18) You often claim to speak for Joe Public - are you aware that the latest poll shows more Britons want to stay in the EU (41%) than leave (39%)?

He speaks for Joe Public in general terms, not specifically on Europe. This is the heart of the matter in fact. People like him because he is a voice they recognise. He is angry, irreverent and anti-establishment. Most people couldn't care less about Europe. So this question misses the point.

19) What is it that you most object to about the UK's membership of the EU - the cheaper and safer flights; the cheaper and better phone calls; the cleaner beaches and action on climate change; the higher food safety standards; the tackling of cross-border crime; the single market; the 3million jobs; the 57 years of peace; the global influence?

Farage can quite easily respond that most of these things are moot points. Flight safety, food standards etc could all be implemented by an independent nation state. The benefits of the Single Market and the figure of 3million jobs are regularly tossed about but rarely quantified solidly. The peace point and 'global influence' are also much debated. And again, Ukip supporters do not care about any of this because they are angry.

Apologies to Hasan for being a bit rough. But these questions are the wrong ones.

Far better would be a simple one liner.

"Do you think shouting and screaming like a petulant child is a particularly edifying approach to politics or would you agree that there are more constructive approaches to achieving one's political ends?"]]>Westminster Is Irrelevant (Not That You Would Know It)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.49701892014-03-17T19:00:00-04:002014-05-17T05:59:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
I say this now because I got back from Strasbourg last week, where the European Parliament absurdly ships itself each month to vote on various regulations and directives. And, unsurprisingly, there was almost no mention of what happened in any UK newspaper, blog or radio station. To be quite honest with you, it makes me want to bash my head against a wall. What happens in Brussels (and Strasbourg) has far more impact on any of lives than what MPs in Westminster usually bitch and moan about.

Here is a list of what was voted on this week, to give you an idea of what you are not being told about:

Measures to prevent money launderers and terrorists from using the financial system to move funds around.

Adjustments to the way you are treated by a country when you move there.

A report that investigated the treatment of bailed out countries by international financial bodies and called for the establishment of a European Monetary Fund.

A proposal that will authorise the funding of around £50 million of your money to international accounting standards quangos.

A decision to guarantee any losses made by the European Investment Bank with your money.

Several proposals that will enhance data protection measures, particularly in reference to NSA spying.

An agreement to enhance cooperation between European and American scientific research communities

The authorisation of the European Copernicus programme which involves the global monitoring of the environment and civilian populations by satellites

An agreement to protect genetic resources in the face of threats to global biodiversity.

A phasing out and eventual ban of types of damaging CFC gases.

A proposal to force developers to tell locals about environmental impacts of their projects.

Measures to enhance protections for people travelling on package holidays.

An attempt to introduce the Single European Sky, which would reduce pollution and times for air travel.

Tougher technical and registration standards for cars and lorries on the road.

I could add another dozen or so things to this list. But you get the point. Each one of the above will directly affect you and yet you probably have no idea that they were even being discussed in the first place.

Full disclosure: I work for a Conservative MEP and will vote Tory in the elections in May (ghastly, I know). But this isn't about ideology. I am just horrified by the national state of collective amnesia currently engulfing the UK. No one seems to have a clue what's going on, and no one really seems interested in finding out.

I don't think it's any one person's fault. Far from it. It reflects the lack of understanding not just amongst British politicians, but also our journalists, our media providers, our business leaders, our teachers, pretty much everyone in fact. And this is made worse by the incredibly confusing, opaque and distant European legislative system (which I struggle to understand even after three years of exile here).

Unfortunately, the only mention of the European Union is usually in relation to what comes out of Nigel Farage's mouth, crap Daily Mail headlines, or from backbench Tories who want to sound like Farage and be in Daily Mail headlines. And it's of course not in the interest of any MP in Westminster to say publically they really are a complete waste of money because all power now resides either in Cameron's dungeon in Downing Street or in Brussels.

The debates spattered across our airwaves and on our televisions about Europe tend not to be based on fact or reality, or any of the dozens of laws being worked and voted on in Brussels. They are instead opportunities for our politicians to scream and shout at each other about things they don't really understand in order to fend off the threat from Ukip, which rides roughshod over any attempts to discuss an issue sensibly.

This is an unfortunate state of affairs. Whether you like or not, whether you want to sever all contact with the European continent or to worship at the altar of Merkel, we are in the European Union and are likely to be so for quite some time. So surely it's about time our journalists and politicians worked out what the European Parliament actually is and what MEPs actually do before giving Farage yet more airtime to get redfaced and angry.

In the car on the way back from Strasbourg yesterday (which by the way really is a complete waste of time, energy and money), I had a long conversation with the assistant of a Croatian MEP. Croatia joined the EU last year and was only recently a warzone, and so its people have a very different view of it to that of the older member states like the UK. She talked about its benefits but also acknowledged its negative sides, of which there are many. But what interested me the most was when she said that most Croatians actually know what the EU is, what the Parliament does and what it means to have joined.

How refreshing. I only began to understand what was going on in Brussels when I moved here a few years ago. I've become more sceptic as I've learnt more about it, but what everyone can agree on, regardless of political colour, is that the debate about Europe taking place in the UK is a non debate based on fictions, disinformation, myth and emotion. Modern democracy at its finest.]]>The Banks Are Admitting Guilt, So Why Is No One Jumping for Joy?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.41740942013-10-30T19:00:00-04:002014-01-23T18:58:21-05:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
As well as banks paying vast sums to close investigations into their mortgage businesses and their employees' manipulation of LIBOR, billions have been set aside in the UK for compensation claims due to various 'mis-selling' scandals. Let's call it what is rather than using such ridiculous Orwellian NewSpeak. They sold financial products to consumers fraudulently, in full knowledge of this fact. The word 'mis-selling' seems to imply they did it by accident. That would be like me saying 'I mis-slept through my alarm this morning'. Or it would be like Sainsbury's selling a salmonella-ridden chicken to a child who subsequently got food poisoning and claiming it was the farmer's fault, not theirs. Bullshit in both cases.

And HSBC, a bank that has seemed to get through the court of public opinion relatively unscathed, paid a figure of almost $2billion for having laundered money for drug lords, Middle Eastern despots and other delightful individuals. Sorry, what? You funnel drug money through the system and no one goes to prison? A billion or four is nothing to these institutions.

Why, then, is no one jumping for joy? The banks have admitted guilt and they are paying us back for all the dodgy deals they got into!

Well, not really. Banks are, in effect, 'fessing up to having behaved fraudulently or criminally. However what 'settling' means is actually 'paying regulators to shut up and stop asking difficult questions'. This is not the same as admitting guilt or wrongdoing. In fact, if you google 'banks admitting their guilt', not much comes up. This is because they haven't really and are now successfully buying their innocence by giving under-resourced and under-staffed regulators are lot of money.

It's a clever ploy. The banks which settle can draw a line under their previous misdemeanours, reassuring everyone that they are reformed and that they have learnt their lessons. 'New management systems' have been introduced, 'risk-based compliance structures' are in place and 'appropriate incentives' are now 'cascading downwards' to avert future law breaking. Forgive me for not being convinced. When a company director says 'how am I to know whether my employees are breaking the law or not', confidence is not inspired. In any other company, such a comment would sound utterly ridiculous.

In reality, they are making a savvy business decision based on the rational conclusion that if they do not settle, the final figure could be far, far larger. $13billion is a drop in the ocean when considering the vast amounts of money governments flooded the banks with during and after the crisis. And the ongoing damage done to their public image is hugely expensive in itself. JPMorgan appeared to be a holy cow in comparison to the evil squid, Goldman Sachs. Now its sheen has been replaced by a tarnish, as people have clocked onto the fact that even though it didn't get bailed out, it has been implicated in just as many scandals as its less fortunate rivals.

And why has no one been locked up? It's approaching a decade since the banks started selling mortgages inappropriately and even longer since they started 'misselling' things to consumers. Sadly the problem is that they weren't really breaking any laws at the time. The governments and regulators of the pre-crisis era were complicit in the outrageous behaviour of the banks. And the pension funds and the asset managers who look after our money were buying all the crap the banks were selling. The entire system was (and continues to be) a mess. You can't retroactively make something illegal just because you don't like it. The banks know this and that's why no one has gone to prison.

This also ties into why the authorities are accepting such relatively tiny sums of money from the banks. Simply put, they can't do much else. They are under-resourced and are no match for the banks who can afford the best legal protection from the most experienced lawyers on the planet.

And the regulators know full well that the bigger the fine, the more likely they are to induce financial instability. As Eric Holder, the US's attorney-general admitted during a Senate hearing last year, the banks are too big to jail as well as being too big to fail. Sadly, five years on, the banks remain in charge even if it might look like governments are getting some cash out of them. Don't be fooled.]]>Fixing the UK Economy by Giving Everyone £6,000 Is an Absurd Ideatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.41624632013-10-25T19:00:00-04:002014-01-23T18:58:21-05:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/recent blog on "quantitative easing for people (QEP)". Mehdi Hasan asserts that giving every man, woman and child in the UK £6,000 is probably the best way to fix our economy. I almost spat out my tea when I read this.

Apparently, because the Bank of England has happily printed £375billion in the past few years and given it to the fraudsters in the City, repeating this but instead directing it to our personal bank accounts makes logical sense. Does it not sound slightly odd to argue that printing another £375billion and then lobbing it into the streets of London, Manchester and Birmingham is a good idea?

In fact there is no such thing as a magic money tree, as Hasan argues. Money does not grow on trees. Fact. Those who argue that QE in any form is a good idea are kidding themselves. And they are not just "discredited austerians" or "inflation hawks". There is not a single historical precedent of money-printing having ended well. Not one. It always ends in economic ruin. Always.

Money exists to make exchanging goods and services in a complex market economy easier. In simple economies, individuals can barter, e.g. I'll fix your roof for six goats and one of your daughters. This is possible because you can do this face to face, check the quality of the goods your buying and stab the individual in the face if he sells you crap. Much as I would love to be paid in goats, I'm not sure where I would put them, and I'm not sure my job in Brussels would be worth that many.

Rather than goats, therefore, I am paid in currency, specifically euros. I receive the value of the services I give my boss in euros and then spend these euros on other goods and services that are in turn priced by the market. Prices go up and down depending on how in demand the services and goods are in question and how much of these goods and services there are available. Though I would like to think the services I provide my boss are invaluable, they are not and a monkey in a suit could probably do my job. And because there are many monkeys in existence, I am paid not that much because I am, devastatingly, replaceable.

Of course in a world in which banks and big corporations have monopolised pretty much everything, prices are fixed and artificially manipulated, but in an ideal (read: non-existent) world, the market would function properly and prices would fluctuate according to demand and supply. If I were a wise individual, I would accept that I can no longer compete with monkeys, learn a new skill that no one else has and find a different job that values me more.

The problem with money printing is that if you start tampering with the money supply, people start getting confused about how much a euro or pound is worth. A currency is only worth as much as the people who use it think it is. I rely on the knowledge that the value of the money in my wallet today will be roughly the same tomorrow. If I start doubting this, then how am I to know what I should be spending on a loaf of bread today? What if the price increases dramatically over night? I would probably panic, withdraw all my money to buy as much bread as possible and hope for the best. Hoarding is entirely rational in a world in which one's finances are insecure, but entirely irrational if 63 million people are doing it simultaneously.

Why is this relevant to the QE debate? Simple, really. If you inject £375billion into the economy, it dilutes the value of the existing money supply. £1 is no longer £1 because there are so many more of them floating around. And what happens when the currency loses its value? You have to use more to buy the same services or goods, i.e. inflation.

Giving £6,000 to everyone in the realm might sound like a lovely idea, but in reality, it would do nothing but devalue the pound even more than it already is. The markets would see this instantly and would sell the pound, potentially triggering a sterling crisis. Given we don't really make or produce anything anymore, we are entirely dependent on importing stuff, which would cost vastly more if the pound lost its value. We would, therefore, be screwed, even if our bank accounts might look healthier than ever before.

You cannot make something valuable just because you say it's valuable. This goes for money as much as it does for a rare bottle of wine or piece of artwork. The more of something there is or the more easily available something is, the less valuable it becomes. Quantitative easing, or money-printing in normal parlance, is a bad idea full stop. It has never worked before and it is unlikely to this time.]]>We Are All a Little Bit Slutty (In Godfrey's World At Least)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.39941712013-09-26T06:12:50-04:002013-11-26T05:12:02-05:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
So when Godfrey Bloom experienced catastrophic system failure at the UKIP conference last week, I have to say I felt a bit sorry for him. Taken out of context, it did seem that he was being an obnoxious bigot. In context, however, and remembering that he (and his party) pines for 'simpler' times when women didn't leave the house, his use of the word 'slut' becomes (slightly) less horrifying. If he had said 'slags', then the opprobrium heaped upon him may well have been justified. Whatever he may have said, it still was not a pleasant sight watching journalists swoop vulture-like onto him.

That said, I couldn't help but smile inwardly. A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post that suggested Mr Bloom wasn't really that active in the European Parliament, and was undermining the UK interest rather than defending it. Because I hadn't clearly explained that I work for a Conservative MEP, one of his employees penned a rather vicious post in response, suggesting that I was, amongst other things, 'as neutral as battery acid'. I have never claimed to be neutral and have regularly stated my support for the Tories, so I was slightly surprised by his accusations.

Despite this, I felt a bit sorry for Mr Bloom after his knifing by Mr Farage. There's no doubt about it: Mr Bloom is a very entertaining speaker and regularly directs well-aimed poison darts at fluffy continental liberals and socialists during parliamentary debates. Indeed, having been called a slut several times by my own mother, I found myself sympathising with him. He is just old-fashioned and misunderstood (like much of the Tory party and all of Ukip).

What the incident illustrates about Ukip's fortunes is perhaps more interesting than my own personal opinions on his demise. Ukip is now in the rather uncomfortable position of straddling the boundary between protest movement and political party aiming for government. On the former, Ukip wins hands down. Farage and his acolytes have injected a large amount of energy into British politics in recent years. Seeing ministers and shadow ministers squirm in response to the blunt approach of the 'kippers' has been delightful. Indeed, they have excelled at doing the job the Lib Dems once (ineffectively) did before the coalition era.

On the latter, however, Ukip has a much tougher job ahead of it. People like Ukip and Farage because they are outside the establishment, free from vested interests and emanating genuinely from the grassroots. It is a populist movement, centred around Farage's (and Bloom's) personal charisma, feeding off popular disillusionment with the perceived incompetence of the British political system. They are popular in the truest sense of the word; they are the political manifestation of the Daily Mail, which in turn is the journalistic manifestation of the mythical 'Middle England'.

To transform this movement into a political party requires serious work. Mr Bloom's ousting was almost inevitable, viewed in this context. With a propensity to say things that come across a bit awkwardly, even if the Daily Mail agrees with them, Bloom was likely to attract unwelcome attention as Farage tried to modernise and gentrify the party. The irony is that the more modernised and gentrified Ukip becomes, the more it looks like the establishment parties its supporters so detest.

And with a media thirsting for fun things to bitch about, it was all but inevitable that one more ill-judged remark would trigger his downfall. Ukip has offered an almost never-ending buffet of controversial characters, closet racists and, dare I say it, 'swivel-eyed loons' to poke fun at. Small wonder then that Channel 4 took the opportunity to bring Mr Bloom crashing down last week. His interaction with their nightly news programme in recent weeks has alone probably boosted their ratings by a several million.

Perhaps the message then is a positive one for the Conservative Party. Lynton Crosby's advice appears to have been 'ignore Ukip and hope they go away'. This may actually work if this week's events are anything to go by. Farage has a tough task ahead of him, something akin to herding drunk cats. If he fails, then Ukip may just fizzle out, in much the same way Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement in Italy appears to be doing. I really hope they don't though; British politics just wouldn't be the same without them.]]>Miliband, Clegg and Cameron: Different Parties, Same Problemstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.39186772013-09-13T19:00:00-04:002013-11-13T05:12:01-05:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/Huffington Post UK. I always find myself grimacing slightly and quickly clicking back to the Daily Mail's celeb column. Although from different political backgrounds (apparently), they all have the same tired, glazed look to them. Unsurprisingly so, given that the headlines are almost without exception negative.

It was with this in mind that I read an op-ed this week in my favourite salmon-coloured newspaper, the FT, by Janan Ganesh, who sought to explain why Miliband is doing so badly. His party is languishing in the polls, despite 'markets' and 'capitalism' being so unpopular. How can he possibly be failing to capitalise on the failure of capitalism?

In many parts of Europe, the right are holding on quite comfortably, notably in Germany, where Merkel is pretty much an immovable object. In countries where the left have taken power in recent years, such as France, Italy and Spain, their governments are at best incompetent and at worst completely inept.

Is this a consequence of a failure of 'global left', as Ganesh phrased it, to properly understand the financial crisis of five years ago? Are voters really innately market friendly and conservative? Is it really fair to say that 'any loss of faith [amongst voters] in the market was not matched by a revival of faith in the state'?

No doubt there are elements of these things. But, returning to my initial point about unpleasant faces, I suspect it's far simpler than that. People don't like politicians, and the more objectionable the person in question, the less likely you are to get elected.

Political scientists, much like economists, seem to spend a lot of time looking for nice patterns to explain human behaviour, but regularly get things horribly wrong. Apparently we're experiencing a boom in the UK, despite the fact that six months ago, permanent recession seemed to be on the cards. Similarly, where did Ukip come from? Again and again, Farage and his slightly unpleasant, red-faced gang keep trouncing the Tories (and Labour) in the polls.

Perhaps the whole situation is far easier to explain if we simply look at modern politics as a crap beauty contest, only instead of porn stars, we have odd-looking politico-nerds to choose from. Not only this, but the politico-nerds have only nominated to represent their parties by saying whatever they need to say to whomever they need to speak to in order to be there.

Only the wettest, most malleable, least controversial people make it to the top of modern political parties, and therefore political life generally. They may be 'popular' (read: tolerated) within their chosen party, but in the real world, most people seem to be able to see through the crap that emanates from their mouths and fingertips. Is it any wonder that everyone is so pissed off with "the establishment"?

So how is it that Labour aren't forty points ahead of the Tories? Is it because British voters are actually deep down big fans of the free market? Is it some sort of 'Anglo-Saxon' character trait to be tolerant of unregulated industry?

No, I think it's far more likely that British voters simply don't like Labour because they don't like Miliband. I'm sure he's a great guy with some decent ideas, but can anyone actually envisage him being taken seriously by Obama, Putin or the other 'statesmen' of our era? When politics comes up in conversation with friends or family, the discussion is never about the relative merits of privatisation, the rights of man or the Marxist dialectic. Instead it's usually about Cameron's or Miliband's deficiencies as human beings.

My suspicion is that a politician (and therefore the party they represent) are as popular as they are close to their voters. Everyone loved Clegg because they thought the Lib Dems were outside "the establishment" and part of the crowd. Labour and the Conservatives have long looked disengaged and beholden to interests (overweight unionists in the former case and City prats in the latter). People vote for these parties because they are familiar, not because they are popular.

And this would also explain why Farage and Boris are so adored, even if on paper (and sometimes in reality) they look and sound like nutcases. They're both entertaining to watch and listen to, especially when their barbed words are directed at sallow-faced party apparatchiks. And refreshingly they seem to have bypassed/risen above the bullshit that has swamped the political establishment over the past few decades.

So in conclusion, I'm not sure Mr Ganesh's assertion that Miliband's unpopularity is due to his misreading of the electorate's views on markets. I think it's much simpler. They just don't like him that much.]]>UKIP Does Not Fight for British Interests in Brusselstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.37665092013-08-18T19:00:00-04:002013-10-18T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/comments made by Janice Atkinson about the work that Godfrey Bloom does on 'the EU's Women's Rights and Gender Equality committee'. Not only is the above quote factually incorrect but her blog post was also a pretty simplistic rendering of the European legislative process. Given that it was about an IEA event, perhaps it was simply due to lack of space, but I thought I'd respond just in case.

Before continuing, I would, as I usually do, emphasise that I am wholeheartedly eurosceptic. Since moving to Brussels to work in the European Parliament, my views have hardened against the EU and I would vote to leave if a referendum on the UK's membership took place tomorrow.

I am not, as some have asserted, a bleeding heart socialist treehugger. Far from it. I also find the debate about women on boards incredibly boring (no offence to my female friends and colleagues) and think it distracts from much more important discussions about parasitic banks. That said, I felt the need to clarify what exactly is happening in Brussels, given that so few politicians and journalists seem to know or care in the UK.

In November last year, Viviane Reding, one of the high priestesses of the European Commission, published a proposal to introduce a requirement for listed companies to have at least 40% women on their boards by 2018. Ms Atkinson implied it was the 'EU's Women's Rights and Gender Equality committee' that has introduced the proposal and that it would take place in November of this year. Not quite the reality of the situation.

Even before the proposal was published last year, Reding was shouted down by her colleagues in the European Commission, the EU's civil service which drafts ideas for laws and regulations, resulting in it being significantly watered down by the time of its publication.

Having been published, it then entered the European Parliament's Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee (not 'the EU's' committee, as Ms Atkinson stated), where it was supported in March of this year. Godfrey Bloom is indeed a member of this committee, but does nothing on it apart from grumble and guffaw, so it was slightly odd to read her suggestion that he had been instrumental in battling against the lefties there.

However, even though a majority of the European Parliament (not all MEPs voted for it) has endorsed the proposal for quotas, the council, the body that represents member states, has yet to agree on a position. Given the irreconcilable divisions between the countries who are in favour of a quota and those against it, an agreement in the near future is unlikely.

Even if the council did finalise a position, it could then take many more months before the European Parliament agrees to it, something required before any proposal can become law. Add to this the fact that the European elections are taking place next May, the system is already beginning to shut down which means a lot of legislation simply won't get done.

Oh and let's give credit where credit is due. The introduction of quotas in the UK is far more likely to come from Vince Cable than from the EU.

I apologise if this makes no sense. On reading it back, I myself got confused. But such is the byzantine European legislative process. As I argued in a blog post a few months ago, it is designed to take place at a snail's pace, and also only after a huge amount of compromising has occurred. Whether or not the quota is introduced, I don't know. But rest assured it will be full of loopholes and exemptions, as is the case with most European legislation, and probably won't enter into force until the early 2020s.

Regarding Ms Atkinson's comment about Godfrey Bloom's work in the European Parliament, I would like to politely let Huffpost readers that Ukip MEPs don't do that much work here. They do not take part in the legislative process, which involves hundreds of hours of meetings, amendment drafting and consultation with affected industries. This is of course not what Ukip MEPs are elected to do, since participation in a system they want to destroy makes little sense. Ukip supporters, and probably most Brits in fact, don't seem to be that phased by amendment deadlines and committee voting lists. But they are an integral part of the system and ignoring them has huge repercussions.

Given that we are in the EU whether we like it or not, and we may well end up staying in it even after a referendum, surely it makes more sense to continue being constructive and engaged rather than angry and red-faced? As I mentioned above, I would vote to leave if asked tomorrow. Our departure would let Europe get on with whatever it wants to do, be it euthanise the Cypriot economy or crown Merkel Empress of the United States of Europe. However whilst we are in it, we need to stop behaving like pubescent teenagers and continue engaging, if only as part of a damage limitation exercise.

Forgive me if this final point sounds patronising. However having worked on European financial services legislation for the past two years, I can assure readers that Ukip does not do a great job of fighting for the UK's or UK industry's interests in the European Parliament.]]>Ignore the Banks (And Vince Cable) - They Are Lyingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.36573892013-07-26T19:00:00-04:002013-09-25T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
The British Bankers' Association stated in 2010 that new regulations would force their members to "hold an extra £600 billion of capital that might otherwise have been deployed as loans to businesses or households". Excuse my French, but this is utter crap. Translated into normal English, this simply means that new requirements for banks to keep more dosh on hand to avoid another financial collapse means they will have less money to lend to businesses and consumers. Seductive and eye-catching an argument this may be. It is in fact crap.

Banks fund themselves either by borrowing money or by raising money from shareholders, the former being debt, the latter being capital. The regulations the banks are criticising are designed to reduce the amount of debt the banks have (i.e. how leveraged they are) and strengthen them by increasing the amount of capital they have. Leveraged banks just means indebted banks. The more indebted, the more unstable, so the logic goes. It's the same as me using a dozen credit cards without having a stable income.

Unsurprisingly, they don't like this because it's expensive to increase capital levels. Amounts of capital can be increased in a number of ways, none of which the plutocracy in the City of London likes very much. Rather than pay their staff such vast bonuses, they can pay them less and keep the savings as capital. They can reduce dividend payments, which is when bank profits are dispersed around shareholders. Retaining those profits would count towards capital. They can issue new shares, but that means diluting the existing ones, making it harder work for the bank to prove it's not a dud investment.

The notion that "a dollar in capital is one less dollar working in the economy" is an outright lie. Unfortunately the vast majority of the media, and even politicians, it now seems, believe it. Vince's latest attack on the Bank of England, quite distastefully referring to them as the 'capital Taliban', is a shocking illustration at how poorly understood the financial system is and reflects the success that banks have had in misrepresenting why the crisis continues to grind on and on.

It is horrifying to witness. Since 2008, not much has really been achieved in ensuring banks do not blow up again. Banks are still too big to fail and benefit from massive subsidies from taxpayers. Your tax money is still being funnelled into the bottomless pits (and wallets) of the likes of Barclays (indirectly via deposit guarantee schemes) and RBS (directly via goverment shareholdings). Despite welcome reforms being introduced, such as the ringfencing of retail from investment banking, the banks have done a fantastic job of watering them down, using the line that the tougher the regulation, the less money they have to lend.

When a bank makes the argument that overly strict regulation will undermine jobs and growth, and damage the real economy, I feel like punching a wall. How dare these monstrous oligopolies claim to care about the economy. Even more obnoxious is the line that 'regulation will reduce the money pensioners get'. Are they seriously claiming that they have suddenly see the light, repented of their sins and now regard themselves as selfless utilities underpinning the infrastructure of British economy?

They are, as private companies, motivated purely by the pursuit of profit. In a functioning market economy, this would be fine. In such circumstances, a company, bank or otherwise, that has misbehaving, breaking the law or investing in dodgy financial products would fail, a process known as creative destruction. However in our non-functioning market economy, where banks know that they are too big to fail thanks to state guarantees, they can do what the hell the like, pay their staff what the hell they like and bully regulators into submission.

The banks got us into the worst crisis since the Great Depression by benefiting from being too big to fail. There may well have been cosmetic changes, but in reality, the biggest banks remain too big. The regulation that has been introduced does not go far enough. They must be cut down to size otherwise the market will remain distorted by state subsidies.

The biggest banks argue that the fact they survived crisis intact proves that it's not size that matters. More crap. They are misrepresenting reality. Size does matter. It was thanks to the likes of RBS, Barclays and JPMorgan that the smaller banks, such as Northern Rock, were encouraged to get into such dodgy business lines in the first place. The big cancerous entities of the City and Wall Street had an entire ecosystem of smaller tumours linked to them. And those entites only became malignant because of an absence of effective regulation and the existence of massive state guarantees.

So when the banks bleat on about regulation reducing lending to the 'real' economy, ignore them. The simple truth is that they are the reason the economy remains mired in debt in the first place. The modern financial system does not serve the real world, remaining an opaque jungle of interconnected casinos. If I had a Barclays-sized chainsaw, I would hack it apart, including the department that actually did help out jihadists and terrorists until it was found out by American authorities.]]>The British Economy Is Now Controlled By an Ex-Goldman Sachs Employeetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.35455742013-07-04T19:00:00-04:002013-09-03T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
These words, reminiscent of something directly out of Orwell's 1984 nightmare, were spoken recently by Alan Greenspan, the ex-chair of the Federal Reserve, the American equivalent of the Bank of England. It's easy to get the impression that dear old Alan hadn't got a clue what he was talking about. Indeed, he seems to suggest that his intention was to confuse and baffle pretty much everyone, including himself, to avoid letting on that the pre-2008 credit boom was built on quicksand.

Why should this matter? Because Alan Greenspan was the most powerful man in the world until Ben Bernanke took over in 2006. Mr Bernanke and his counterparts in London, Frankfurt and Tokyo now control the global economy, or think they can.

This might seem like hyperbole. However the evidence is visible for all to see. The markets now only go up and down when a central banker speaks.

When Mr Draghi says he will do anything to stop Greece or Portugal leaving the eurozone, the markets go up and the euro strengthens. When he criticises the slow pace of the Greek or Portuguese governments' suicidal 'austerity programme', their governments' borrowing costs soar and the markets wobble. It is simple blackmail. Do Draghi's bidding or you will default and trigger economic Armageddon.

In the US, Ben Bernanke's whisperings can ignite the markets like a match near a petrol pump. When he suggested the Federal Reserve would slow down its money printing activities, the markets went into tailspin, the US government's debt costs spiked and investors across the globe panicked. It was only when he clarified his mumblings that everyone calmed down a bit.

This week, the deputy governor of the Australian central bank made a joke about how his colleagues sat around chatting for a long time about how much to increase interest rates. As a consequence, the Australian dollar collapsed until the person who had made the joke apologised the next day.

This small group of men (only Russia has a female central bank governor) decides how much the money in our pockets is worth. They decide whether governments survive or collapse. They decide how much a family will pay back in mortgage repayments each month and whether a business will go bust or not. The health of the global economy is reliant on the 'opaque answers' and the 'mumbling' of about a dozen or so individuals.

This is relevant to the UK right now because Mark Carney has just taken over from Mervyn King at the Bank of England. Coverage has been almost unanimously flattering, describing him as a "rock star" central banker, as a George Clooney type figure, as the saviour of the British economy. Indeed, a Huffpost blogger said on Thursday,

"...I hope Carney's good run does continue, but I fear instead that this initial flurry of good news will simply allow him to get his feet under the table before he is called forward to stabilise the UK economy with some more decisive action."

This comment was made in reference to the fact that various bits of economic data published this week were positive. What's remarkable is that a) this good news is trusted and that b) it was being attributed to Carney before he had even started work. The double dip recession was edited out of the economic history books recently because of 'incorrect statistics', so why believe these ones?

And where does the faith in central bankers come from? Why is everyone OK with the fact that, in much of the world, economic policy has been de facto outsourced by democratically elected governments to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats?

They are uniquely qualified, so it is said, to be able to predict the future and manage vast and complex economies. They are experts, apparently, who have often spent decades working in private financial institutions like Goldman Sachs or writing papers on now-rubbished economic theory in the libraries of LSE or Harvard. Why then are we still in recession, half a decade after the crisis began?

A few details about who now controls the British economy, given that Osborne has pretty much given up. Mark Carney worked for Goldman Sachs for 13 years. He was advising the Russian government on how to avoid going bankrupt when Goldman Sachs was betting that this would happen. The notion that he has somehow shed all Goldman-style thinking when he moved into his role in the Canadian Finance Ministry is ludicrous.

He is credited with preventing an economic meltdown in Canada. Actually this was not simply thanks to him keeping the Canadian economy drunk on low interest rates, but more to do with the fact that Canadian banks had not been allowed to become too big too fail. Canada did well precisely because its banks were tamed in the late 1990s, while in the UK and USA let their banks turn into glorified casinos. Carney did not personally save Canada from economic ruin. He is in fact a creature of the establishment that brought the British and American financial systems down.

To return to the initial quote by Alan Greenspan, which indicates that he didn't know what was going on or how to fix the mess he was in part responsible for. If Greenspan was confused, why on earth do people think that Carney will be any different?

It seems slightly absurd to claim that Carney, Bernanke, Draghi and a few others can pre-empt the economic behaviour of almost seven billion individuals, but this is what they are apparently able to do. It is argued that only central bankers can save us from permanent economic stagnation. This is despite the fact (yes, the fact) that so many of them worked for the banks that destroyed our economies in the first place. Who, exactly, is in control right now?]]>The Conservative Party Should Be More Than Just a Colourtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.35010712013-07-01T19:00:00-04:002013-08-31T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/When I read Peter Bone's blog the other day that listed his forty 'true-blue' proposals, I decided to immediately cancel my membership. Then, after about twenty minutes of irritation, I realised that doing so would not make the blindest bit of difference to the Tories' continued belief that aping Ukip will bring them electoral success. So instead, I decided to moan about it here in the hope that perhaps someone will read it and consider the depths to which British politics have sunk.

My journey from limp-wristed liberal to Conservative Party member and activist has been an relatively short one. Since my mid-teens I've regularly flip-flopped around on things political, often pronouncing my allegiance to one cause or another based not on a rational consideration of the issues but on which group of people I was with at the time or how bad a hangover I had.

I cringe when I consider the sort of crap I used to say (and still say, for that matter). In the early 2000s, I blew horns in central London to express my passionate distaste for the fox-hunting ban (despite having never hunted foxes). On arriving at university to study history, I arrogantly declared that I was above party politics because "ideology is irrelevant" (despite having never read a manifesto or any political philosophy). While working at a business organisation in London, I joined the 'I heart Clegg' bandwagon, but then jumped off it as soon as everyone else did. I landed in the Tory Party, not because I had read Hayek or von Mises, but mainly, I now see, because of my upbringing, my education and the opportunity it gave me to piss off my generally socialist friends.

Being the insecure chap I was, I used politics in the same way I used my clothes to project the image of the person I thought I wanted to be. In the same way that I used to wear bright, florescent vests when dancing semi-comatose in East London warehouses, I ranted about the European attack on British democracy and the horrors of the modern welfare state. I did both these things because I foolishly thought doing so made me 'me'. I now see that neither florescent vests nor snivelling anti-welfarism are particularly attractive things to be associated with.

On moving to Brussels for what I had thought would be a year, at most, I continued my self-righteous diatribe against Europe and socialism. Now I had horrifying real-world experience of socialists in action (try sitting through a speech by Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament) and a seemingly endless list of reasons for why the UK had to leave the EU. In fact, if you look at the earlier blog posts I wrote here, you can see some of that arrogance shining through quite wonderfully.

Gradually, however, I've worked out that politics and ideology is not about character or identity. They are far more than that. An ideology is the framework that one uses to understand the world and to make decisions based on that understanding. Recently I read a condensed version of Hayek's Road to Serfdom and shuddered at its appropriateness for our times. Von Mises, writing over half a century ago, diagnosed in a few pages the current financial crisis. Ideology is not irrelevant in the slightest because without it, we are effectively brain-dead automatons functioning in a purposeless machine.

There are a lot of things about the Conservative Party that I cannot abide. I find the class-based self-righteousness frustrating, the disconnected behaviour of the Osborne-Cameron clique disheartening and the closed-mindedness of the grassroots depressing. However, these are of course characteristics that can be assigned to any political party, including Labour.

Despite this, I feel most at home in the Tory Party. I do not trust the state to make decisions on my behalf because I do not trust myself. Hayek describes "the arrogant conceit" of politicians and regulators that think they can control and preempt the actions of millions of individuals each day. They can't and attempting to do so will lead to a deadening totalitarianism. This makes it very hard for me to accept the socialist view of the world, which suggests that the state can somehow smooth away the nastier 'learned' bits of human nature, even though I am quite envious of Marxist optimism.

That said, what I have also learnt is to accept other people's views, political or otherwise. My political journey has brought me to the belief that only a genuinely free market, limited by the rule of law, is capable of managing the interests of billions of individuals (a situation that has not existed for decades, if ever). That does not mean I have the right to write off the legitimately-held beliefs of a socialist who has been on their own political journey. My view of the world is mine alone, and that goes for everyone else currently conscious and alive.

So when I read things like Bone's Alternative "True Blue" Queen's Speech, I try to not get annoyed because what I see is politics as identity, politics as opportunity to score points and politics as a way to laugh and sneer. Naming a day after Margaret Thatcher, making life hell for Romanians and abolishing the Department of Energy and Climate Change might seem a good laugh, but they are more about Daily Mail headlines than genuine political leadership.

We are at the end of an era, of big government, of never-ending economic growth, of population increase. From now on, things are going to get tough, whether we like it or not. There is no money left (even the wealth of the 1% is fake central bank money). Rather than spend time worrying about what expenses they can and can't claim or whether they will get reelected, politicians should be having a frank, honest and sober discussion about the UK's currently unstable future. If they do not, my guess is it will only be a matter of time before my generation says 'fuck off' to the current system, as it is in many parts of the world right now.]]>Everyone Is a Little Bit Bigotedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.34705612013-06-24T19:00:00-04:002013-08-24T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/the title of my previous post the way I did because it's apparently all anyone really noticed. In a sense, I have only myself to blame because I made it deliberately provocative in order to get some attention. Whoops. Henceforth I have decided to sit on ideas for blog posts for at least a weekend before clicking submit.

A lot of the arguments in the comment section last week centred on what being a bigot means. When I 'Wikipediaed' it, the following definition came up. A bigot is:

"someone who, as a result of their prejudices, treats other people with hatred, contempt, and intolerance on the basis of a person's ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics".

Interestingly this would imply that almost everyone who commented on last week's post were bigots, gay, straight, Christian or atheist.

It's not nice being called a bigot. After a few days of rather unpleasant comments, I realised that I myself had bigot-like tendencies for having made such generalisations about the gay community to which I belong and also towards B.J. Epstein. I was annoyed and intolerant when I wrote the post. I was then annoyed and intolerant when I got sucked into arguments with other annoyed and intolerant people. The whole episode in general made me annoyed and intolerant.

After day three of annoyance and intolerance, I decided to stop reacting. The only people who leave comments tend to be people with an axe to grind. And I apparently have the biggest axe of all because I felt the need to write the post in the first place. It was the fear that I was wrong or that I had upset people that made me react defensively (and in a bigoted manner).

We all have the potential for bigotry. The difference is where that bigotry is directed. For some, it is religious groups, be they minorities like Muslims or established communities like Christians. For others, it is bankers, who seem to have successfully impoverished entire countries, or blacks/whites/reds/yellows who are, as a result of their skin colour, are deemed to inferior races. Personally, I tend to be less bigoted than I used to be, but when I do get on my high horse, which happens more than I like to admit, I tend to direct my anger towards the people I perceive to be ignorant, stupid, naive or socialist.

The problem is that when I do this, I stop thinking of the person in question and start thinking of a group. It's very easy to get angry at groups because you don't see the individuals that make up the group. Individuals, like myself, tend to belong to many different groups, be they national, cultural or linguistic. Which group I most identify myself with depends on my mood and my circumstances, which can change minute by minute.

So in relation to accusations that I am homophobic, based on what I said about the gay world last week, I'd like to clarify that I do not hate gays in the slightest. I was simply commenting on my own experience of the gay world, which is of course not necessarily the experience others have of the gay world. Saying this publicly should not, however, automatically make me a bigot. But if I am wrong, then fair enough. A bigot is someone who is unwilling to have their opinions disputed, which is not me.

Perhaps the problem really is simply the media only focusing on the promiscuity of the gay world, ignoring a comparable situation of excess in the straight world. I'm not sure that straight people have an equivalent of Grindr however. Either way, the stereotype is there for us gays to demolish. We can continue stamping our feet at the injustice of this stereotype perpetuated by the homophobic establishment or we can prove those who believe it wrong by breaking out of it.

The other focus of the comments was that my suggestion to have a cup of tea with someone you disagree with rather than shout at them is naive and pointless. Recent experience would suggest otherwise. I read a wonderful story about how the congregation of a mosque in northern England invited the English Defence League to have a cup of tea with them rather than protest. A few weeks ago I saw photos of a long chain of Christians encircling some praying Muslims to protect them from a Christian mob in Egypt. And the Standing Men and Women have quickly come to symbolise the protests in Istanbul and elsewhere. This to me is far more powerful a statement than hurling insults at a group, even if you disagree with them.

In the context of the gay marriage debate, try this. If you are an angry gay, go to a village church and say what you say online to an old lady sitting in a pew. If you are an angry Christian, firstly remember that Jesus didn't get angry that often and then go find a loving gay couple and tell them they are unnatural, sinful and going to hell. If that doesn't appeal too much, then have a conversation instead. And if that conversation gets heated, walk away. Anger begets anger, which leads to hatred, which leads to more hatred. This goes for the gay marriage debate as much as it does for pretty much every argument we participate in.

Bigotry is not about the position you hold on an issue. It is the way in which you convey that position. If you get angry, you are probably being a bigot. And as Oliver Wendell Holmes said (via Wikipedia), "The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract."]]>Being Anti-Gay Marriage Does Not Make You a Bigottag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.34522472013-06-17T19:00:00-04:002013-08-17T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/I read a Huffington Post blog by B.J. Epstein about gays who are against gay marriage. As I read it, I bristled with irritation. Who is she to say what an individual can and can't think? Is she a gay man? Does her position as a literature professor make her uniquely qualified to dictate who can say or believe what?

I shuddered when I read one of the closing remarks. She made the astonishingly contradictory statement that "having freedom of choice means that we give people options and respect their decisions - but they shouldn't argue against or stand in the way of gay-marriage-supporting gays". How can you respect someone's opinion and then say that that person should keep their that opinion to themselves? The sentence just doesn't make sense. In fact, it's the sort of thing you could imagine some character in Orwell's 1984 saying. "You can think this but you cannot think this".

I felt I had to respond to Epstein, not so much about her arguments, but more because I found it frustrating that she in effect told people who question the mainstream to shut up and keep their views to themselves. So here is my response, firstly on gay marriage and then on her article.

Not being deeply religious, I find it hard to understand why those who are find gay marriage so terrifying. According to the standard religious view, gays marrying gays will trigger the collapse of modern society. Aside from being a tad dramatic, I have to say I find this quite an odd claim. When I think of myself as some sort of harbinger of doom, I'm a bit taken aback. I spend most of my time worrying about my flowerboxes or coming up with ideas for blog posts, not plotting the downfall of western democracy. A far greater threat to modern society seems to be the total absence of love and respect between individuals, which is an issue in both the gay and straight worlds.

Another argument is that gay marriage is condoning an unnatural lifestyle. Aside from the presence of gay monkeys, gay penguins and gay dolphins in the natural world, I find this to be another odd one. I spent much of my teenage life desperately trying to make myself straight. I won't go into details, but I can assure anyone reading this that it was an abject failure and completely miserable. I don't really care if I am gay because of my DNA or my divorced parents. I tried to make myself not gay, and failed. Therefore for me, being gay is my natural state.

I had a quick glance in the Bible to see what exactly the Pope and the Archbishop are basing their assertions on, that homosexuality is sinful and condoning it is a bad idea. A single passage (Romans 1:24-27) by Paul appears to be where the whole position emanates from. He was writing to the Romans of the 1st Century, suggesting that getting drunk, having sex with anything that moved and obsessing about fame, wealth and power were not recipes for happiness. To be honest, if you look at the state of the western world today, I can't help but think Saint Paul would probably see some parallels.

The gay world is characterised by promiscuity and a lax attitude towards partying, something that we, as gays, need to acknowledge. But that is not the entire gay world. What Paul saw in first century Rome is visible today in New York, London or Berlin. I've been to the gay scenes in these places and can assure anyone who hasn't that they are indeed 'worldly' places. But these places also exist in the straight world. Gays do not have ownership rights over promiscuity and drug abuse.

Furthermore, all people, gay or straight, are capable of love. And all people are capable of spiritual as well as material union. The latter is what I think Paul was criticising, not the former, which is what we should all aspire to. Marriage has changed, whether you like it or not. And If the starting point is that religious marriage is a recognition by whichever god you believe in of a spiritual connection between two individuals, then I think this is something that religious people could maybe accept.

With regard to Epstein's article, I have to say I think her line of argument is a major part of what is holding back full equality for gays. I find the notion of forcing a group of people to accept a view they do not agree with a horrifying one. I do not believe a church should be forced to marry people they do not want to, even if its policy may seem old-fashioned or bigoted. That change in stance has to come from within the church itself, otherwise it is a disturbing expression of totalitarianism. I also do not believe a church should prevent other people from marrying other people if they want to. We live in a liberal democracy where such beliefs should be tolerated.

If you want people to change their minds about something, then sit down and chat with them. It's easy to insult a group of people or a category via a blog post or a carefully-crafted tweet on the Internet. It is harder to do so if you are sat in front of them having a cup of tea. Those who do not like the idea of gay marriage are perfectly entitled to that view, regardless of whether you think it is palatable or not. To be honest, if all a religious person knows of the gay world is that it is characterised by sex and partying, which it often is, then who can blame them? The onus is on us, as gay men, to show that it is more than these things and that their fears of moral decline and collapse are unfounded.

So, Professor Epstein, rather than write off the views of millions of individuals, how about we organise a polite meeting with yourself (a frustrated gay rights activist), me (a slightly conflicted 26-year-old gay), the vicar from my mum's village (a very pleasant ex-army man) and a few randomly selected people off the street? I suspect it would be an interesting discussion and infinitely more productive than a rather snide blog post.]]>Why I'm Becoming a Student Againtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.34333752013-06-13T05:50:49-04:002013-08-13T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
My twenty one year old self, on hearing such absurd things, would not very politely say 'f*ck off' and then continue the never-ending party that characterised his early twenties. I would also warn this individual that bleached hair is not something to be proud of, his first job would, despite its focus being waste incineration policy, set him up for bigger, better things and that the absence of love in his life was a temporary feature.

This may sound like the beginning of some god-awful holiday novel. I suppose, in a sense, it is because I have to say that right now I do feel like I'm on my way to somewhere quite pleasant.

Until recently, my main concern in life was ensuring people knew who I was. That meant trying to be the centre of attention at work, in bars and on Facebook. I lived on the basis that if I dictated to life what I wanted from it, then I would not only get what I wanted but also be assured of happiness.

The problem with this approach was that the things I thought brought happiness didn't really do those things at all. My notion of success, embedded in me from the moment I left my mum's womb and then elaborated and clarified as I grew up, involved being rich, being successful, being recognised, being beautiful and being loud. As a consequence, I spent all my time worrying about getting these things or, on acquiring them, ensuring I didn't lose them.

Thankfully I realised a few months ago that what I had would never have been enough. I had been brainwashed into thinking that the future is brighter, that the grass is always greener, that my lot is insufficient and that I must always strive for more. I was brainwashed into thinking that if only I had a nice flat in the centre of a fun city, if only I had a busy social life, if only I wore the clothes I thought would make look 'cool', if only I went on glamorous holidays and had the body of a porn star, then I would be happy.

However, despite living in a nice flat in the centre of a fun city, despite having a busy social life, despite wearing the clothes I thought would make me look cool, despite going on extravagant holidays and having a decent body, I was permanently frustrated. And because of this, I thought that I needed a nicer flat, a busier social life and cooler, more expensive clothes, sunnier holidays and harder abs. A vicious cycle was developing.

On realising that none of these things were actually making me happy, I decided to stop running and sit down. So I sat down for a few months, had a think about what really make me happy and then reassessed my horribly distorted priorities.

Having done so, I discovered that I had been wasting my today by worrying about tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. So I made a conscious decision to focus my attention on the next twenty four hours. Living my life day by day has been hard at times, but ultimately has made me infinitely more content.

I also deleted my Facebook account (I strongly recommend giving this a go, it is astonishing how life can become focused around your profile, your status updates and the illusion of intimacy). I stopped going to bars and clubs in search of sensory oblivion. I stopped doing the things I thought other people wanted me to do.

Yesterday it was revealed that wages have dramatically shrunk or stagnated since the crisis began in 2008. Youth unemployment is higher than ever. The western world is mired in recession. The prospects of the 'millenial' generation, those who are today between the ages of 18 and 30, have never been worse.

Having the tendency to feel sorry for myself, it has been tempting to blame other people, politicians, parents, the elderly, for my generation's prospects. However I started to try to accept life on life's terms and do what I can do make something of my life. I enjoy reading and writing, so that is what I am going to do, despite the doubt that washes over me when I read the headlines in the news.

As a eurocrat, I live a comfortable life (although nothing like the champagned-infused existence Ukip would have you believe). From September, I will be taking a huge pay cut. I will be moving out of my nice flat into something smaller, in a less exciting suburb of Brussels. I will be making a conscious decision to slide off the greasy career pole I had been clambering up.

Living in a world that teaches me that money, power and fame are the things I need to find happiness, I often doubt my decision to become a poverty-stricken student again. But all I need do is rewind things to a few months back and remember that these things did not make me truly happy. Sure, they brought me short, sharp bursts of fun, but it was fun that was surface-deep and ephemeral.

What makes me happy is reading science fiction and writing about things I find interesting, like God and Ukip. I find joy in seeing close friends for a coffee to chat about their fears, my fears, their dreams and my dreams. These things conveniently do not require a Facebook profile, a huge pay cheque or vast penthouse apartment.

Now my main worry is how I will move my flowerboxes from my flat in the centre of Brussels to the flat I will hopefully find soon in its suburbs. Overall life is a lot more pleasant now I'm not worrying about the future!]]>Not All Immigrants Are Islamist Fruit Pickerstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.33960232013-06-10T19:00:00-04:002013-08-10T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
Integration has been a challenge. Do I speak Flemish or French or English or neither? This apparently depends very much on where in Belgium you are and who you are speaking to. Speaking French to a Flemish person in Antwerp is like slapping them in the face apparently. Do I kiss the cheek of person I've just met? If so, how many kisses? One if I'm in the Flemish countryside, two if I haven't seen the person I'm meeting for a while, but only if they're French-speaking. Do I admit I work in the European Parliament, and expect a look of 'oh god, another eurocrat' or do I pretend I am unrelated to the EU machine (it's not just Ukippers who hate the EU)?

Navigating Belgian administration, which all migrants are required to do on their arrival, is like trying to sort out a Rubik's cube with a blindfold on. You have to register with your local commune which requires several visits to several offices at several different times of the day. A police officer at some point knocks on your door to make sure you actually live where you say you live. And you also have to fill in a form for an identity card that only idiot-savants can truly understand.

Despite these challenges, as the years have passed, I have come to delight in Brussels and the Belgian way of life. I don't know whether it is a case of Stockholm syndrome, but I do genuinely quite enjoy playing 'dodge the dog cr*p' on the pavements on my way to work. I have now realised that shouting at my landlady about illegally re-wiring my radiators to 'fix' them will not get them fixed any faster. Indeed, on realising that Belgians really couldn't care less what I think about their capital city, I decided it would be best to just go with the flow.

Why am I bringing my experiences of moving to Belgium up? Mainly because, as an immigrant, I find the debate around immigration unbelievably irritating, especially in the UK. On the basis of most headlines in the British press, it's easy to get the impression that all immigrants exist purely to steal jobs from hapless Brits or scrounge money off our apparently generous welfare system.

Before anyone goes bright red with rage and accuses me of being a bleeding-heart closet-terrorist, I agree that a borderless world is not realistic or pragmatic. I know it's a bit rich saying this given I benefit from the EU's right to free movement. But given how few jobs there are and how overstretched the UK's welfare system is, it should be okay to ask for a Canadian or Australian points based system without being accused of being racist.

I also think it's entirely reasonable to ask anyone moving to the UK to leave their extremism, religiosity and psycopathic tendencies at the border. This goes for all individuals, regardless of creed or colour (Buddhists, Chinese communists, Russian spies and drunk Australians are just as capable of unpleasant behaviour as Muslim extremists.)

To assert that all immigrants are the same, as the current participants in the British immigration non-debate do, is quite frankly ridiculous. An immigrant is a person who has moved from one place to another. It's that simple. An immigrant can be a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, a Vogue model, a Romanian tramp or a Chinese student. It is idiotic not to differentiate between these groups.

Sadly this is exactly the premise that the government's current immigration policy is based on. It is so absurd that Theresa May's only solid commitment is to reduce immigration rates to "tens of thousands' a year. Presumably this means when they have successfully limited it to 99,999 individuals, everyone can chill out.

To reach this figure, the government has to close its borders to exactly the people we need right now. Students from the booming emerging markets to be charged extortionate fees by our underfunded universities. Obscenely rich bankers from New York to pay wedges of cash to HMRC to pay for our free healthcare. Engineers and scientists from India to help rebuild our creaking energy and transport infrastructure. Instead of making it easy for these groups, who tend to have lots of dosh and a desire to work rather than receive benefits, the government is pulling up the drawbridge.

The ire of the electorate is directed towards Polish people and Muslims. No one seems too fussed about the 400,000 Frenchmen who live in west London. And no one seems to have noticed that most Muslims in the UK have been here for decades and don't generally feel like blowing up St Paul's Cathedral. Bunching all foreigners together is not only intellectually stunted but also hugely damaging for the UK's prospects, social, economic and cultural.

The government should grow some balls and confront Ukip's simplistic complaints head on, start a debate in Europe about the right to free movement (the UK is not alone in questioning the status quo) and stop making decisions based on what the Daily Mail's headlines will say the next day. Not all immigrants are Islamist fruit pickers.]]>The EU Has No Power to Make Us Do Anything, So Calm Downtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.33639612013-06-02T19:00:00-04:002013-08-02T05:12:01-04:00Harry Cooperhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cooper/
One lady made the quite valid point that if you are high on drugs, you probably aren't very well placed to fight off invading armies of fascist eurocrats, hell-bent on destroying British democracy. So I would like to state clearly that I did not, and do not, condone the use of illegal drugs to enhance one's ability to kill European regulators.

Despite my request for the angries to email me rather than insult me in the comment section, no one did. So I'd like to tackle one of the recurring themes from the comments spattered below last week's post. Many people seem to be convinced that the European Union is genuinely satanic and driven by forces that would make even my namesake, Harry Potter, tremble.

To pre-empt the frothing kippers' insults (again), I would like to say (again) that I am not that pro-European, think the UK would probably do just fine outside the EU and that by remaining in it, the UK is holding up a lot of stuff the Europeans need to do to avoid certain economic doom.

But when I hear descriptions of Brussels as capital of a hideous European USSR or fascist dictatorship, I have to say I feel a tad confused. Having lived in this slightly drab, miserable city for two years, I fail to see any of the hallmarks of an evil empire. Quite the opposite in fact.

I don't see anyone being crucified or fed to lions and I don't think my flat has been bugged by any secret police. There are no public floggings and the eurocrats I know are definitely not closet Nazis. The capital of Europe, unlike its Roman or Soviet equivalents, is actually quite grimy and non-functioning. Indeed if its capital city is anything to go by, Europe is in fact covered in dog sh*t. And where are the Euro-stormtroopers? I imagine their blue uniforms would be covered in yellow stars, making them quite adorable, if they actually existed.

So if it doesn't look like an evil empire, why do people think it is? Red tape and immigrants appear to be the rallying cry for most British patriots, which is actually quite uninspiring when you think about it. For Churchill, it was liberating Europe from fascism. For Thatcher, it was amputating the dead hand of the state. For our contemporary leaders, it is the injustice of European SME regulation and Polish fruit pickers.

In this context, I read with interest comments made by an angry frother on ConHome last week. The person claimed that, in relation to the UK being taken to court over its benefits tests, 'the EU's reach is now so great that many of those top 10 issues [that voters say they care about] are influenced in part or controlled in totality by Brussels.'

It's hardly surprising that the kippers (or wannabe kippers) are experiencing such waves of orgiastic pleasure over this particular event. After all, it combines three of their favourite themes: immigrants, benefits and Europe. However despite what they seem to see as an example of Europe's power, I see it as quite the opposite.

Firstly we should clarify what we mean when we say ''the EU' because at the moment most coverage in the UK is misleading. It is the European Commission, which is the understaffed and under-resourced civil service of the EU, that has initiated these proceedings, not 'the EU', which covers a lot more. The EC spends most of its time complaining, but has very little real authority or power. So already, and unsurprisingly, the court case is being blown way out of proportion.

Secondly, this particular tiff between 'the EU' and the UK has been going on for years. The UK has happily got away with applying its own benefits tests all that time without 'the EU' spanking Iain Duncan Smith for being a naughty boy.

Thirdly, the UK is supported by Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, all of whom are part of 'the EU' which the kippers and IDS so passionately detest. Given that the 'rich' northern member states tend not to like 'poor' southern member states, we can assume that the 'benefits test' alliance will expand to include Finland, Sweden and Denmark. This is hardly the unity one would expect from an evil empire.

Fourthly, what happens if the UK is found guilty by the European Court of Justice? Not much actually. After several years of bitching and moaning, the ECJ will either say 'legal', which means case closed, or it will say 'illegal', which means the laws will then be changed. There might be a fine, but no one is going to force the UK to pay it. And at no point will 'the EU' invade the UK to enforce a law that has been ignored for years already.

The EU's reach is, in effect, non-existent because 'the EU' relies on its member states, including the UK, to implement and enforce legislation. When a member state doesn't implement or enforce legislation, 'the EU' (meaning the Commission civil service) can complain all it likes. But it has no actual power to make member states do things they don't want to do, like reduce fiscal deficits, stop burning toxic waste or making sure olive oil is dispensed from sealed containers in restaurants.

The EU is more an aspiration than a solid entity to worry about. The most it can do is ask politely that we desist from doing something. So to all the kippers out there who are stamping their feet and getting very upset, calm the f*ck down. If you must be angry, direct your frustration at the real culprit, which is our own government.]]>